Hello everyone! My name is Cid and I’m currently in the Summer Organizer Program with Lavender Phoenix working to create digital and video content for 18MR. I am an undergraduate student at Stanford and have been heavily involved in campus organizing specifically with the local Asian American committee at my university, radicalized by my own personal experiences as a genderqueer Asian American and the realization that our struggles for liberation are interconnected!
This past year, I spent a lot of my organizing efforts demanding for Stanford to divest from Israel. At each demonstration, I couldn’t help but respond emotionally to hearing Palestinian stories. People chanted until their voices gave out. I banged on bucket drums as hard as possible to mimic my shouts as I fought tears. At times, I was deeply embarrassed at how emotional I got. But if I wasn’t crying, I was deeply angry. Crying was my way to process a deep-seated rage at the ongoing genocide and its connections towards other genocides, violence, and militarism in many of our own homelands, including my own.
Empathy, that pull to emotion, is mobilizing. When we have unlimited access to footage depicting atrocity after atrocity, it is radical to cry and feel with those who are hurting instead of being numb to the pain. But I worry that too much empathy may leave you too debilitated to do the organizing work. That’s when I turn to the concept of revolutionary optimism.
Revolutionary optimism is a very active belief that your current actions are contributing to the eventual success of the revolution. In these times, it is important to practice care for the people in your community as well, creating spaces to hold both grief and hope. During our darkest times, finding peace in the comfort of our fellow organizers around us can help us re-realize what we are fighting for and why. Holding onto our dreams and visions for the future to help inform us of our current strategies prevents us from holding onto doom and cynicism. It is important to surround yourself with fellow comrades, to laugh and even enjoy yourself at times, because no one can sustain themselves solely on anger and sadness. There are ways in which we can channel these emotions to create purposeful tools for our organizing, but it is also important to hold onto hope and love, as well.
If you’re curious to learn more about utilizing revolutionary optimism and emotions in your organizing, here are some rad resources that I’ve found to be helpful:
This video is awesome because it connects struggle in Vietnam with Palestine, as well as looking back in our history and pasts as something to inform our present revolutionary efforts!
I attribute my survival to the healing that comes with community. – Lavender Phoenix
A question I ask often: Are we making space for grief in our organizing work?For those who like to look at things pragmatically and have a tangible strategy to think about, check this out!
Thank you so much for tuning into this month’s newsletter with me! If you are able to, please donate to my LavNix fundraising page, because it’s important to show up for your community through all types of support to sustain our organizing. I hope you all hold revolutionary optimism in your hearts as you continue on your organizing journey!
In solidarity,
Cid + Irma, Turner, Sharmin, Kari, Leyen, Allison, and Brenda – the 18MR Team
P.S. If you’ve enjoyed reading our monthly newsletter, would you chip in $5 so we can keep inviting rad guest editors?
